Not one Free Lance Trainer who is totally dependent on only trainings

HI EVERY ONE, This is Raajh Shekhar. Corporate Trainer, author and life coach. Other day when i was in a friendly discussion with one of my trainer friend, he expressed an opinion. i was curious to know how far it is true according to you all.
" There is not one Free Lance Trainer who is totally dependent on only trainings (strictly no other income source) assignments and is financially in a good position and happy with all other areas of life"
pl share your ideas so that it would be useful for the new aspiring trainers.

Dear Raajh Shekhar,

I am little surprised that this questions has come from a corporate trainer and life coach. The person who teaches others should be well aware of the the market in which he/she is working. Anyway, replies to your questions are as below:

a) Whether to depend on only on freelancing is a moot question. Few freelancers, including this humble freelancer, supplement training with consulting. Going further whether depend only on one subject or on multiple subjects is one's personal decision.

b) "Financial good position": - There is no direct answer for this because what is your "good", many not be my good or what is your "good" could be someone else's "very good". Someone gets support because of factors like caste, creed, religion, education institution etc. This support helps in elevating the financial position. Someone does not get any support. Someone is ready to give kickbacks to the HR/Training professionals, for someone it is against his/her personal values. Therefore, do not just look at the financial position. Value a person who out of greed did not compromise the personal or family values.

c) In India, especially in post liberalisation era, success means financial wealth. Nobody bothers how this wealth was acquired. This very greed has corrupted the society. If you read newspapers, you will find that few oil companies bribed the government employees of the oil ministry to gain the insight on the decisions taken by the ministry. All are big business houses. Do you approve this money-making out of deceit? Who is better for the country - a freelancer does a fair business or a corrupt business house grow astronomically but with evil practices?

d) "All other areas of life": - Which are the areas? Everyone's problems are different. Sometimes family issues drag one's business. On the contrary, someone's business grows because of tremendous family support.

e) Again it depends on the what kind of freelancing one does. Does that subject has lowest market value? Does the freelancer has uniqueness i.e. product differentiation? Has he/she done any research on the subject area or depends on the downloaded material from the internet.

f) Not many freelancers know how to market their talent. They forever depend on the training or consulting companies. Some time metamorphosis from parasite to full-fledged biological unit has to happen. Few do it and few do not do it.

Final comments: - Freelancing is a matter of one's conscious choice. For many freelancers, it is a matter of personal values. They consider that it is better to a be a freelancers than be a broker of few services. To grow one's business, one requires business acumen, innovative mindset, negotiation skills and so on. Few have it and few may not have it. Hence the uneven growth.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

Friends.
I strongly disagree.
This view expressed is probably because:-
1. The one in question is professionally weak, or
2. his failure as freelancer, or
3. He is yet to come across a successful freelancer.
I am a freelancer.
Education, experience and exposure made me one.
As a professional and highly placed HSE manager I was paid a handsome salary and other benefits not in India but elsewhere. At an appropriate occasion I choose to be a freelancer – training and consultancy. Here only I could realize what I am capable of and what my worth is. I am purely on to training and consultancy and seek pleasure being a freelancer. This is probably because of my mindset too.
There are many, many successful and happy freelancers who agree with me too.
Regards
Kesava Pillai

Thank you sirs. You gave a wonderful kick start to the topic. I humbly submit that it is an opinion received by me. It's not mine. I on and off heard from some trainers. So I thought this topic will attract ideas of experts which can be a good guidance for aspiring trainers. Thank you for taking the discussion in right direction. I invite other friends also to participate

I personally thank divaker sir and pillai sir for their valuable information. I could see the experience and expertise in their honest and transparent post

Thanks Mr. Pillai and Mr. Divaker for the valuable inputs. I chose to be a trainer after my retirement. But then for a freelance soft skill trainer, the income may not be steady if one restricts oneself to just corporate training and hence I have trained myself to train CBSE School Faculty, College Students and Faculty and also Corporate Faculty. The academic cycle is different from Corporate financial / performance appraisal / training cycle.. Therefore one will be kept busy all the time. To further supplement, I am also into HR Consultancy, as Mr. Divaker indicated. However, there are some trainers, one of them in Bangalore, who turned out to be a broker ( dont want to name him in public forum like this)... ie he will accept too many programmes and then share the programme with other trainers but will fix the training charges himself taking a cut from the client and then negotiate and cut down the charges from the trainer and further take 500 Rs. from the trainer as his fees. I came to know of this just a couple of days ago. Is this also a kind of additional source of (ofcourse unethical in my point of view, since I never take money from another trainer !) income ??? My aim of involvement in consultancy and training is primarily to keep myself mentally engaged and challenged, secondly I strongly felt that the official retirement (from this world) is a long way to go and in the process I earn some additional income to spend money (more on medicine and less on food !!!!)....